My Celeste was “born” last night after a rough day of labor. All had gone well up to that point: eye opening, painting, rooting, etc.
My day started off with weighting the limbs and rooting the eyelashes which went well. Then, on to inserting the eyes. I had borrowed from my soft sculpture doll days and painted the eyes on felt so I had a flat “eye” that could conform to the face and be easily glued in. “Easily” being the optimum word here. I put glue on the edges and attempted to glue the first eye in but it wouldn’t attach. I then tried the process again with a different glue. No go. I then used the mole skin to attach the eyes and applied e6000 to the edges for extra security. Eyes in! Yea!
I applied Ceramcoat to the eyes and while waiting for them to dry, I modified the body (#5884) and then realized the chunky thighs would NOT fit in the openings. Aack! I remembered a body I had recently purchased from someone on the forum so I pulled it out and…the openings were large enough! So, I modified that body. Whew!
I was starting to get concerned about the eyes because the varnish wasn’t drying very fast so I set a fan to blow on the eyes…Back to the body assembly. I put the first leg in and noticed the friction kept the leg from being able to rotate. (I had tried a ring when I first weighted the leg but it made it impossible to put the plug in.)
Soooo…This is where it goes from frustrating to REALLY bad… I remembered some people on the forum saying that super glue applied to the rim of the limb would allow the limb to rotate easily. Do you see where this is going?
I gently and carefully (I thought!) applied super glue to the rim of the first leg. Then, the second one. As I was looking at the second leg, I almost had heart failure when I noticed the glue had somehow run down to the knee and had puddled behind the knee. Aaaaaaaggghhhh!!!
I rushed the leg to the sink and ran some water over it. Bad call. I now had white, cloudy areas on the thigh as well as the original dribble. I was fighting the urge to panic. I searched on the forum for removing super glue. The first thread basically said acetone would work but it’ll take the paint off. Ugh! The second one was saying the same but a nurse jumped in and said Neosporin would remove the glue. I immediately applied the Neosporin…and waited…and prayed. I did gently rub with my finger during that time. A few minutes later I wiped it off and the glue was GONE but the paint was fine!!
I put the limbs on the body and stuffed it. I now had a headless baby and the eyes were still drying. I wanted to take the baby on my trip today and I was running out of time. I went ahead and weighted the head and put it on the body. FINALLY!! Born at 11 pm!!
The eyes were dry this morning, thank God! My brother was not happy to be taking a doll with us but he got over it. I’m soooo happy this sweet, little one is done. I love this kit!
The super glue has been banned from my reborn area. I’ll try the paper glaze next time.
